Perpetual licenses left the VMware catalog, and the old habit of renewing individual editions left with them. Every buyer now pays per physical CPU core, so the hardware inventory sets the price. The shift rewards teams that can prove what they actually run.
- VMware vSphere Foundation grants 0.25 TiB of vSAN capacity per licensed core. VMware Cloud Foundation grants 1 TiB. Both assume you run more of the stack than many teams do.
- Some sellers still quote a 72-core order floor as if it were a product rule. It is not. Count your cores before you take a number.
- Audit what you use, then negotiate the term. A bridge renewal beats a three-year lock-in signed before you have weighed alternatives.
Read the full VMware licensing breakdown.
The economics behind this migration wave, including the three year cost model and why exits run long, are in the 2026 State of Enterprise Infrastructure report.
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